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Why does certain content get shared so much and go viral? Last year we looked at 100m posts and highlighted the common characteristics of viral content. This year we added over 1 billion articles to our content database and looked again at the most shared posts. Our analysis shows that viral posts remain outliers, and unfortunately there is no magic formula to go viral.
However, there are insights from viral content that we can use to improve the shareability and engagement of our own content. Below we have provided examples of the most shared posts of 2015 and tried to break down why they went viral. If you haven’t got time to review them individually, you can jump straight to our conclusions.
Our review has identified four different elements which occur frequently with viral content. A combination of these elements may not guarantee viral success but they can improve shareability. Look out for these elements in each of the viral posts below....
Today, you’ll learn 9 strategies that’ll help you create highly engaging content that’ll draw your target audience in.
To create a richer experience for your audience, your content needs to impact their lives and answer their questions. It also needs to be strategically planned. Don’t be like the 70% of marketers who lack a consistent or integrated content strategy.
Let’s take a look at the 6 content writing strategies that’ll help you acquire more organic traffic....
However, I thought I’d create this post to get you a solid start. I’ve put together a list of 11 points that your content should meet if you want it to be effective.
It doesn’t matter if your content is text, audio, or video—most of these points will still apply.
It also doesn’t matter what the content will be used for.
Great content is necessary not only for your blog and any guest posts you make but also for other channels such as social media.
Finally, before we get started, I know that checklists aren’t really fun, but they’re effective and efficient.
Tumblr and WPP conducted an exclusive survey recently to know what readers are looking for on social media networks. Surprisingly, what they are looking for is content.
Each of the apps that you’ll read about next was designed to take your simple content and boost its perceived value. After all, you can’t say that your content is high quality until the readers say so or benefit from it.
Let these nine content marketing apps reshape your vision, guide you on the right path, and revamp your content into content that drives traffic and leads: ...
There are thousands of articles that have been written about ways to grow your social media following (some of which by myself), but one of the things that most articles fail to cater for is actually growing them from nothing.
We all know how Coca Cola, Pepsi and Oreo have built enormous social media followings, but what if you’re not a huge brand? How about if you’ve just set up a blog and had no real online presence beforehand?
This is what I’m going to focus on – the first 3-4 months of your social media campaign.
Tumblr and WPP conducted an exclusive survey recently to know what readers are looking for on social media networks. Surprisingly, what they are looking for is content.
Each of the apps that you’ll read about next was designed to take your simple content and boost its perceived value. After all, you can’t say that your content is high quality until the readers say so or benefit from it.
Let these nine content marketing apps reshape your vision, guide you on the right path, and revamp your content into content that drives traffic and leads....
Microsoft studied 2000 participants in Canada to test the length of their attention span and whether it has changed over time. The study found that the average attention span of a study participant in the year 2000 was 12 seconds.
In 2013 that average attention span had decreased to 8 seconds.
The average attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds....
When you are running a blog, it is easy to get caught up in creating new content. It might even make you forget all about the articles that you have written before.
Yet, even if you only write one article a week for your blog, and one a week as a guest post on another blog, you will have a portfolio of more than 100 articles in just a year.
This collection can be viewed as an investment. It has the potential to earn you money, and just like any other investment, it needs to be managed.
You need to manage your content, measure its results, and make sure that it is bringing in the best possible return.There are several ways that your old articles can be used to your advantage....
Content marketing is hard. But it doesn’t have to be boring.Lately I’ve been trying my hand at testing smart little tactics — or what I call “hacks” — to get better results out of the content marketing strategy I oversee. And I’ve been amazed at what tiny, innovative tests can do to drive some serious results. Plus, it’s pretty fun!
I was first inspired by researching the idea of “growth hacking” for a presentation I’ve done at a couple of conferences called, in short, “Hacking Human” … which doesn’t involve body parts and machetes, I swear. The gist of it is that marketers can optimize their content for what humans want and are looking for online, and then use growth hacking principles to test their assumptions and get the most out of their efforts....
Businesses need to create new content at an unprecedented rate. Seventy percent of B2Bs are creating more content than they did just one year ago, according to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends report.
With this growth in demand comes a unique set of problems. How do business owners continually create new, original content? How do they regularly come up with topics that haven’t already been covered a thousand times before? And perhaps most importantly, how do they find the time to create this content while still trying to run their business?
Fortunately, using content creation tools can help significantly. This post will look at some amazing tools to help you continually create unique, relevant content for your audience....
This infographic about infographics utilizes a cool blueprint flowchart concept.. something you’d think of as stereotypical for a blueprint. It’s cool, but it might be a tad ironic – it’s harder to read than you’d like it to be. Let’s jump into the things that you should focus on to make sure your infographic looks simple, readable and beautiful.
In their 2015 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, Social Media Examiner broke social media content into 4 categories: - Visuals (71%). Encompass a wide range of content such as photographs, charts, infographics, cartoons, and other images.
- Blogs (70%). Are classified as social media text in this context (not social media platforms as in previous years. (Note: I disagree with this classification since blogs contain the other 3 social content formats and visual social content can be text.)
- Video (57%). Include film as well as presentations with commentary.
- Podcasting (10%). This is an audio format....
With so much content out there it can be hard to ensure that your brand’s message does not get lost in the noise of the Internet.
So to help your content stand out from the numerous dry standard formatted blogs out there why not take a different approach and frame your content as a quiz, or a comic strip? Perhaps move onto Twitter and host a Q&A session? Or why not post your content into a shared space and generate discussion around it?
There are many ways in which you can differentiate your brand message and really engage with prospects - below we have pulled together 12 of the most awesome creative media formats, from charts, text messages all the way through to content vampires, to help you really make sure that your content is noticed. As fashion designer and style icon Vivienne Westwood once said “You will have a more interesting life if you wear impressive clothes” and the same applies for content marketing - you will have a more interesting brand if you create impressive content.”
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Do you know that there is an acceptable length for every type of content you make to optimize its readability and its SEO ranking?
Yes, there is a reasonable length for every type of content available and it is wise to follow them in order for you to attract as many readers as possible.
The lengths vary from social media networks to target audience. Facebook has no character limit yet the best content length for it is just around 40 characters while Twitter which has the famous 140 limit character has an optimal content length of up to 100 characters only.
The purpose of content is to be able to promote your business or brand in all available channels across social media without spending a lot of money for promoting your business. Knowing the criteria or limitations when making content saves you time, money and effort.
Members of the DSE Advisory Board's End User Council answer this week's question: The cost of creating and managing content can become onerous, particularly for small teams with limited resources. What are your secrets for effective content creation on a modest budget?
NewsCred has filtered through the nonsense. We’ve found 30 of the best content marketing blogs and newsletters around so that you don’t have to spend time differentiating the good from the bad. They’ll help you improve your strategy, navigate through the various platforms, and give you the push you need to produce amazing content.
Without further ado, here they are - our favorite blogs and newsletters.....
Without consistent output, your results will be a fraction of what they could be.
And since we both know the power of content marketing, it’s a shame.
But I have good news! It’s a problem that can be fixed if you’re willing to keep an open mind.
I’m going to show you six writing tactics that can turn you into a more focused and efficient writer. They have worked for me and other top notch writers.
You might not be interested in trying them all at first, but give one or two a try, and once you get good results, try others....
If our content never moves, if it simply sits on a website without any views, shares, and engagement, it has about the same value as the world’s greatest movie script locked from view in a cold, dark vault. The investment in our content is largely wasted.
In this post I will cover 12 “quick hit” structural actions you can take with your content to make it more “shareable.”
The basic idea is that we want to remove every possible obstacle in our control so there is simply no excuse not to share your content!
Here we go. Let’s ignite …
I like to ask people when I meet them, “What’s your story?”
It’s more interesting to me than typical questions about education, major, city of origin, job title, or sports team. All of these things might play a part in their story, but story implies something much broader and more personal. It’s the narrative of your past, present, and expected future. It’s the drama of your own life as you see it playing out.
When I think of the most interesting and talented people I know, I think of their story. I don’t think of their status. “Oh, he’s a graduate student” is a status. So is, “Married, salesperson, lives in Ohio”, or, “Studying business at USC”. A status is a static snapshot of a handful of labels attached to a person based on some institutions or external standards. It conveys nothing really unique that gets to the core of the person, or the animating force behind their actions and ideas. There is no passion in it. No sense of direction and creativity....
Having not published original content on the blog for 30 days, we saw only a 4 percent dip in traffic compared to the previous month.
The extra time off allowed us to experiment with content in some amazing ways. Our most successful experiments were these:
- Create new email drip campaigns based on Buffer blog posts
- Update older blog posts with new information, graphics
- Create SlideShares
- Republish content to Medium
- Bundle tools posts into Product Hunt collections
I’m happy to explain fully how we went about this experiment and all of the 14 strategies that we tried. And happy to clarify anything in the comments!
Some people are natural writers, while others work hard to hone their craft.
Then there are those who just never get along with the written word at all.
If you’d rather head for a root canal than sit down in front of a keyboard and start typing – how can you build an audience, and authority, in a world dominated by blogs?
Don’t worry, all is not lost!
There are plenty of alternative ways to educate, inform, inspire and entertain the folks that you want to build a relationship with.
Here are 6 ways to do just that, and build an audience and authority without writing a word....
Too many businesses produce content on so many topics that it’s clear they haven’t taken the time to learn what their audience really wants to read.
In other words, these content marketers don’t know for whom they’re writing. There are two ways to solve this problem along with some helpful tools:
Identify your target audiences, find out where they reside, and the topics they discuss.
Find out what your competitors write.
What does your target audience want from you?
Finding where your target audience hangs out online and what they share should inform your content development....
Your headline is the first contact with your content, and must grab your target audiences’ attention. At this point you have no control – the reader does. They either click the link to your content or they don’t. The job of the content creator is to make sure that they choose the first option, and read and share your carefully crafted content.
How much time do you spend coming up with a killer title? Reading stats like this one by Copyblogger should make you sit up and take notice.“
On average 8 out of 10 people will read your headline but only 2 out of ten will read the rest of your content.”....
Every time you write a new post, you share it on the social web, right? Well, how’s that working for you?
It’s unfortunate, but most Twitter and Facebook feeds look like a graveyard – no likes, comments, or shares. That’s because no one shows you how to use social media properly.
Today, I want to share with you the strategies that I have used to maximize the number of social shares I get from each post. Social media traffic can play a big role in growing a site as you might have seen in my 100k challenge.
Chief content officer at MarketingProfs and author of Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content, Handley aimed to flip the perspective on this area of marketing—from simply adding to information overload to creating content that makes an impact—by sharing one equation and five tips.
While there’s no single road to more effective content marketing, several guidelines can help associations navigate the journey, Handley said. She recommended three key steps: - Sharing empathy and experiences.
- Telling relevant and inspiring stories.
- Being “ridiculously useful.”
Or, put another way: Useful x Empathetic x Inspiring = Great Content
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![2015 Social Media Content Use [Research and Charts] - Heidi Cohen | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/MukvVPYOHoW8yV0B52VOEjl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
![How To Write Blog Headlines People Will Actually Click On [Report] | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/jkp-bpBmT9Ah-po9NzXTJDl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
Great examples of why blogging posts go viral.